The game is currently very CPU heavy at this point in development and the graphics settings do not make much difference to performance as a result.

Therefore, if you're not running 'high-mid' range CPU's like the i5-2500K, you'll likely be running into slowdown on occasion during the beta (and WvW may be unplayable for lower end dual cores ect.). Reducing settings will not help in this situation, so you may as well just keep them up as high as you can.

The only caveat to the 'settings have no effect' rule is refelections which may increase performance slightly.

With this announcement, we wont be allowing a massive amount of individual 'gw2 isn't running well in beta!' threads here if it is due to that CPU bottleneck, so dont take it personally if the thread gets closed. It may be that we already know that CPU is struggling, or should struggle. We will soon get to see the extent of the bottleneck from our performance gathering.

Display: the graphics-settings slider has only a minor impact on performance at this time.We are currently optimizing Guild Wars 2, making ongoing improvements to the game’s frame rate. Presently, the game is CPU-bound on most high-end systems, so lowering graphics settings or upgrading your video card may not have a large impact on performance.
On older or lower-end machines, it is recommended that you try disabling reflections to improve frame rate.
Installing the game client into the Program Files directory on Windows Vista or Windows 7 can lead to issues with the patching process.
It is advised that you install the game to another folder or launch it as an administrator.
Forcing anti-aliasing through AMD Catalyst™ Control Center or AMD VISION™ Engine Control Center typically results in a black screen when playing. ATI cards that are known to cause the black-screen issue while using the latest drivers (12.3) include:
HD 2900
HD 5770
HD 6970

Windows TDR (Timeout Detection and Recovery) will sometimes restart a user’s graphics drivers if they become unresponsive, resulting in a notification that the graphics driver has been restarted.

Alienware ATI Laptops: the Guild Wars 2 client does not restore properly after being minimized.

Currently, adjusting the core clock speed of the GPU or CPU typically results in lower performance.It is advised that you leave core clock speeds at factory defaults.
AMD CrossFire™ and NVIDIA® SLI™ are not currently supported.
These features should be disabled while running the game.

Enabling NVIDIA 3D VISION® may cause a crash on some systems.

If you experience a crash while this setting is enabled, it is recommended that you disable it in the NVIDIA Control Panel.

I'm going to investigate OCing in the first few minutes of the beta and post the results :)

I'm trying to figure out where they got their information on overclocking performance myself. My OCing during CBT3 did nothing but increase my performance, whether I was recording or not. Perhaps I am just one of the atypical cases.

dansamy said:

WvW is what I want to play the most. *pouts*

Do I need to build another new rig for GW2?

WvW destroyed my i5 to the point that we couldn't use any of our WvW footage simply because the framerate was too low, even with the graphics settings at the lowest possible settings. It seems to vary a lot per person (other press teams were running WvW quite well), but if you keep your expectations low going in, you can't be too disappointed regardless of the results.

By the time the game is released though, your 955 should be just fine. You probably won't need to upgrade to get respectable performance once the engine is optimized properly.

Hm, It says core clocks not multiplier. I wonder if this means those of us who only changed the multiplier on our cpu's will be unaffected? all I did with my i5 2500k is switch to multi from 33 to 42 to overclock it.

That's my curiosity for the evening.. also wondering why my comp keeps crashing, but that will get its own thread soon if I can't figure it out.